"A Small Town's Mean Streak": Mesquite, Nevada Has NOTHING On Asheboro & Greensboro, North Carolina

This morning, my good friend, Buzz-Armfield-of-the-Asheboro-Armfields-who-gave-one-million-dollars-to-the-Randolph-Hospital-Cancer-Center forwarded a CNN story that I actually had already seen and archived for commentary later. 

Like the heart-breaking story of Kimberly Hiatt a few months back, CNN's piece showcased a good woman's suicide, after an honest mistake snowballed into the destruction of a life (well, actually two lives, because this woman took the man she loved with her). 

In this case, CNN opined that Donna Fairchild's death-by-her-own-hand  showcased "a small town's mean streak".

Her death apparently also brought about a huge back-lash against her tormentors, and fostered in real change for the town. 

But, of course, for that to happen, someone always has to die.

Summer is not over, and I'm not quite ready to resume regular blogging.  While there are several blistering posts already composed in my noggin, I'm just not there yet.

But this story, like Kimberly Hiatt's, hit a deep nerve.

These days, as I watch local bloggers (when I say "local", I mean the oh-so-enlightened and progressive citizens of Greensboro's "Blogsboro", to whom I turned for help after all the fine, upstanding "right people" of Asheboro shut me out/down) huff and puff about the sorry state of our world . . . about how politicians and lawyers and men-in-business suits have destroyed so many futures, and ushered America into a black hole of economic and social despair . . . I often shake my head in dismay.

For I was fighting that battle long before anyone else was.  All by myself.  Playing by all the rules (as opposed to many who do not - yet somehow get all manner of sympathy and nearly everything they want on government-sponsored platter . . . or at least become university Presidents after they kill the once rock-solid bank).  But for all of my efforts, I got zero assistance from ANYONE who was supposed to have my back.

And the noble progressives of Blogsboro simply didn't care. They couldn't be bothered.  It wasn't "relevant" to their pursuit of happiness.

Life was good for them.

Now that virtually whole world is on the same train I boarded thirteen years ago (albeit not all for the same reasons), my story is old news.  I'm STILL not the right kind of victim for what my pal Buzzy calls the "Brie and Volvo" crowd.  I was not victimized by some nebulous/vague societal evil/conspiracy-of-"rich"-white-Bush-loving-conservatives (well, unless you count Fear and Apathy) . . . my villains actually have names.  Their crimes are documented in black and white.

But Garland Yates is just fine with "non-profit" executives lying in civil Courtrooms under his jurisdiction.  It's called a get-out-of-jail-free card.  All the right people in Asheboro get at least one.

 You simply cannot win with this bunch.

I know Donna Fairchild's pain.  I vividly remember the hometown headline that I was a liar . . . as if it were yesterday . . . put front page, above-the-fold by one of "the chosen" in the despicable gang of elitist, sexist, racist PIGS that ran my hometown of Asheboro, North Carolina into the ground . . . a headline that covered the guilty tails of a pair of greedy, lying, WAY-overpaid-for-what-they-do MBA's who always put style above substance . . . two carpet-bagging jerks who CLEARLY (based on what they did to me) would have rather me let a desperately-ill newborn baby girl die than cast reasonable doubt on their cutesy marketing themes.

"Care you can trust".  That's ALWAYS been a good one. 

(I murmur it every time I get a decent headache.)

It was a lawsuit and a headline designed to fiscally-destroy, emotionally/professionally crush, and humiliate me . . . in the town where I was raised and came back home to serve . . .  the berg where my Mother taught school for 30 years . . . the place where my parents still lived - and where my Father ultimately died without ever seeing real justice for his daughter. 

And if you're an evil mill-town bastard . . . calling in your favors amongst your pals at the Asheboro Rotary . . . snickering over your ingenuity . . . and (above all) keeping score in your sick/power-tripping games . . . one-and-a-half out of three isn't bad, I suppose.

But "the boys" (and a few girls) didn't count on the fact that, barely able-to-make-ends-meet, nearly crushed-in-all-ways and totally humiliated, I would stand my ground and fight back.  Or that I would even "win" . . . not that the USELESS POSERS "writing" for the Courier Tribune could acknowledge that "win" in a front page headline . . . and not that "winning" actually turned out to be a win.

All hail Steve Schmidly.  But hey, Asheboro's got booze now, and maybe his daughter will get elected to something. 

These days, I have to wonder.  If (drowning in despair, after being UTTERLY ABANDONED by EVERY local, state & Federal regulatory & law-enforcement agency that was supposed to protect and speak for me AND that newborn baby girl) I had marched into the gilded lobby of Randolph Hospital and blown my head off (splattering the brain-matter containing the hard-won-higher-education-that-the-mill-town-kings-say-they-value-so-much all over the walls), would that have gotten me any sympathy/bleeding-heart-hand-wringing . . . or my story/cause some posthumous national news coverage?

Or if, after being cyberstalked and viciously cyber-bullied/LIBELED online . . . only to have the deliberately obtuse & lazy DA/Sherrif's Department throw me under the bus - and a burned-out Randolph County judge let the psycho-blogger off . . . .  would me hanging myself in my apartment far from "home" have made Edward Cone-of-the-Cones, or Roch Smith, Jr., or John Robinson, or Sue Polinsky,  or Jeff Martin HAPPY?

And I'm thinking it would.  In fact, I KNOW it would.  The evidence is also there in black and white.  Martin, in particular, would have reveled in the "breaking" of me.   

Too bad for the right-fine, upstanding folk of Asheboro and Greensboro that Mary Johnson was/is made of stronger stuff . . . and that they were just totally, utterly WRONG . . . about her . . . indeed, about EVERYTHING.

For now, I can stand as living, breathing, blogging evidence that, in terms of "mean streaks", Mesquite, Nevada has NOTHING on the "communities" of Asheboro and Greensboro, North Carolina.

I'll be back . . . soon.